ON A BRONZE BLlDDHA. 731 



earlier centuries, or, on the other, the enormously clever design, the 

 bewildering luxuriance of form and suggestion, shown during the 

 period of two centuries and a half lately elapsed, we can not withhold 

 wonder and admiration from the Japanese for their work in bronze in 

 all epochs. It has the stamp of individuality as most European work 

 has not. Bronzes with us are too apt to look like things turned out of 

 a hopper, like buttons from a mill. The profusion of ornament which 

 alarms and irritates fastidious people who have formed their taste on 

 masterpieces surviving from the great Greek and Italian epochs, be- 

 comes interesting so soon as the meaning of the various decorative 

 motifs dawns on them. Thus the crane is associated with a certain 

 sage, hero, or saint who is a sort of patron god of knowledge and long- 

 evity. The tortoise is a symbol wishing one long life; the peach blos- 

 som means that the giver desires the recipient to be beloved and to 

 become the parent of lovely children. 



There is a mighty cosmogony, there is a vast and bewildering hagi- 

 ology, there is a labyrinth of legend, in which Buddhist ascetics, local 

 Buddhas, old heroes of the people, animals endowed with magical pow- 

 ers, and even inanimate things which take on life, are lit subjects for 

 the potter and the founder in bronze. The result is that one is tempted 

 to say that no country has ever shown bronzes which contain so much 

 human interest by way of subject, so much point with respect to useful- 

 ness in temple and house, so much elegance of finish, beauty of shape, 

 and originality of design as the Japanese. 



By far the greater part of the bronzes in Japan have to do with the 

 service of a temple. There are many other uses for the metal, of course, 

 such as coinage, weapons, ornaments for the person, utensils for the 

 house, decorative pieces, boxes, trays, flower-holders, and what not. 

 But the houses of nobles in Japan are far from luxurious, and as a rule 

 the costliest things are appointments of or gifts to a temple. Shiu- 

 toism in its purer form had no idols and few altar-ornaments in its tem- 

 ples, but Buddhism in the form which it has taken far from its seat in 

 India, encouraged these luxuries. Japanese writers who belong to the 

 comparatively free-thinking sects which may be allied to Confucianism 

 have always reproached the native Buddhists with using the fine arts 

 to captivate the multitude, deceiving the eye with pictures and statu- 

 ettes and the understanding with monkish tricks. They have taken 

 much the same attitude toward Buddhism that the Reformation took 

 toward Roman Catholicism. 



On the other hand the same thing was cynically defended on the 

 ground that Buddhist monks were useful in keeping the common peo- 

 ple ignorant and steeped in superstition. Or, the argument was, that 

 it suited a certain phase of mind. u People may go so far as to destroy 

 those who hold to names and pictures," wrote a Japanese apologist in 

 1690 in his preface to the Buts-zo-dsu-i, translated by Dr. J. Hoffman 

 into German ; "yea, to give to the flames the wooden statues of Buddha. 

 But will the silly layman for that understand any better the glorious 



